00:23:00 · Ty Morse
[00:23:00] S0: You talked about the three body problem and deterrence and how Palmer is kind of like the prototypical. I think Elon is another one of these things where if you come after him, he is just going to throw everything that he has at you. So that's very costly for you to come after him. Then over time, less and less people want to do so. Why is deterrence like so important? And what is it?
00:23:20 · Lulu Cheng Meservey
[00:23:20] S1: Everything is about incentives. And as you move through the world, you have to shape people's incentives for how to interact with you. And so when you see young women being told or telling each other themselves, like, treat yourself in a way that demands respect for men you go on dates with, or people demanding to be taken seriously by an employer. All of these things are just us trying to shape incentives for how people should interact with us. There is a real incentive, like a default incentive for people on the internet to just take potshots because they get engagement out of it. And it's like the there's a quote about is it politics? It's so vicious because the stakes are so low. It's like the people for whom the stakes are the lowest are the most vicious because they have the more upside. And so the more you gain exposure, the more people are going to take shots at you to try to get the upside. And so you have to be actively reshaping incentives. And this is where we go back to the idea of plan for the long term. It is not about temporary pain avoidance. Do not pursue temporary pain avoidance. It's not a legitimate goal. Set your sight on the finished pizza. And do what it takes to get there. And sometimes it'll look nonsensical to others. And that's okay, you'll just swallow that. Sometimes it'll be painful for you. And that's okay, you'll just deal with it. But at the end of the thing, you'll have your delicious hot pizza the way that you wanted it, as opposed to somebody who gets blocked by basically their own psychology. They get blocked by fear. They get blocked by wanting to please or wanting to fit in. These things are all fake. They're in our heads. But these people who are blocked by the things in their own heads will just stay back at stage one while you're enjoying your pizza.
00:25:19 · Ty Morse
[00:25:19] S0: What do you think the best examples are of people or situations that you've seen where you could tell that there was this temporary pain avoidance that led to some massive blow up?
00:25:28 · Lulu Cheng Meservey
[00:25:28] S1: I think Google had this. Google, for a long time, let activists run rampant in the company. And each individual instance was not severe enough to take dramatic action. And so in diplomacy, there's a concept of sausage slicing or salami slicing. And so let's say, I want this piece of territory that you have, and I ask you for it, you would say no. But if I were to encroach a couple inches, and you let me, and then I encroach a couple inches more, or I just start to have my people just kind of walk through there, it's very hard for you to identify one moment in time when it doesn't feel like you're overreacting to something small. And so I can salami slice my way to a bigger piece of salami. This is why The US does like freedom of navigation patrols in the South China Sea. Because if you don't, then others in the region or China can sort of salami slice their way to Yeah. Regional So it is really important to resist being salami sliced by your own employees above all, but anybody. So in the Google example, there were just these signs. I mean, James Damore was probably one of the larger signs. But daily things of people saying things at work that just have nothing to do with making the best technology. And then eventually, it comes to a head where you have to base major business decisions on having an overwhelmingly ideological monolithic workforce. And now you're in a very, very painful position of do you piss off like 60% of your employees? Or do you handcuff yourself and not participate in government or military programs that where you could actually do a lot of good? Now your decisions are much harder because you avoided the temporary pain of just cutting it off when it would have seemed like you're overreacting. I think the essential lesson is don't be afraid to be seen as if you're massively overreacting. This is something that Elon is quite good at. Again, it looks like chaos to someone who doesn't know what you're doing. That's their default word for it. So if it's like one person does one small thing, and then you react with like overwhelming force, it can look like a massive overreaction. But what you're doing is actually, you're reacting to the 100 things that would have happened. You're not reacting to the one thing. You're reacting to the 100 things that would have happened that now won't.
00:28:11 · Lulu Cheng Meservey, Ty Morse
And so the guy who went on your podcast, and I think he immediately got fired for it. [00:28:16] S0: Oh, yeah, [00:28:17] S1: there were people who thought that that was maybe an [00:28:19] S0: overreaction. I about that. [00:28:25] S1: Oh, yeah, I was I was thinking about it. I was waiting to bring it up that I think some people saw that as an overreaction. I did not see it as an overreaction, you know, blessings and best wishes to that guy. But it he he kind of took one for the team, because what happened to him was deterrence for everybody else. Like, once you have a very leaky culture, what do you do you even do? You fire everybody? Like, at that point, it becomes very, very hard to manage. But if you are willing to do what looks like overreacting along the way, then you can manage that a lot better. And today, xAI has one of the much, much less leaky cultures than most other companies of that size and scale. [00:29:12] S0: How do you actually stop that? So if you do, you know, taking back from that example, if you do ever end up finding yourself in a situation where you have a very leaky culture, I remember when another thing from Walter Isaacson biography is Elon said things keep on leaking to the press. We got to have that stop. How do you actually stop that? Like if it's happening at your company?
00:29:12 · Ty Morse, Lulu Cheng Meservey
[00:29:12] S0: How do you actually stop that? So if you do, you know, taking back from that example, if you do ever end up finding yourself in a situation where you have a very leaky culture, I remember when another thing from Walter Isaacson biography is Elon said things keep on leaking to the press. We got to have that stop. How do you actually stop that? Like if it's happening at your company? [00:29:34] S1: Stopping it is hard and brutal. And you have to be willing to go into tyrant mode a little bit. Like you can try to weed people out. You can hire investigators. You can try to monitor people. But at that point, it's like trying to weed out Al Qaeda from the village population. It's just very difficult because they look the same. You know, they look the same. They're sitting at the same desk. Like, who is it? Then you have to do things that feel bad to you and to them in order to get to that point. So, I think that it can be improved, but prevention is better. [00:30:17] S0: And also prevention is worth a pound of cure sort of situation? [00:30:20] S1: Yes, prevention is better. And what prevention looks like is actually a lot of it comes down to personal loyalty to the founder. It's not about installing the software on the laptop or having policies or signing NDAs. The biggest fake LARP y thing in the world is signing NDAs. I never, never has that had an impact on anyone or anything. And the most sensitive situations I've ever been brought into. I don't think I've signed NDAs.